The modern communications era has brought about a tremendous expansion of wireline and wireless networks. Computer networks, television networks, and telephony networks are experiencing an unprecedented technological expansion, fueled by consumer demand. Wireless and mobile networking technologies have addressed related consumer demands, while providing more flexibility and immediacy of information transfer.
Current and future networking technologies continue to facilitate ease of information transfer and convenience to users. Due to the now ubiquitous nature of electronic communication devices, people of all ages and education levels are utilizing electronic devices to communicate with other individuals or contacts, receive services and/or share information, media and other content. One area in which there is a demand to increase ease of information transfer relates to the delivery of services to a user of a mobile terminal. The services may be in the form of a particular media or communication application desired by the user, such as a music player, a game player, an electronic book, short messages, email, content sharing, games, etc. The services may also be in the form of interactive applications in which the user may respond to a network device in order to perform a task or achieve a goal. The services may be provided from a network server or other network device, or even from the mobile terminal such as, for example, a mobile telephone, a mobile television, a mobile gaming system, etc.
In some situations, electronic games may enhance the interaction that users have with their mobile phones. As such, users of mobile phones often spend a great deal of time playing electronic games. However, the users may become very familiar with a particular game, such that the user can anticipate the action of the game before an event occurs in the game. Such familiarity may cause the user to become bored with a game. One method of preventing such boredom is to frequently acquire new games to play. Currently, new games involving virtual worlds have become popular. At present, some of these games involve sitting at a computer and typing or using a mouse. As mobile phones become more ubiquitous, it may be beneficial to take advantage of the mobile nature of these phones to deliver a game or application experience that is more intuitive, fun, physical, tangible, and interactive.
In this regard, mobile phones implementing Near Field Communication may provide a particularly new and promising opportunity relating to electronic gaming that at present may not be fully exploited. Near Field Communication enables data to be exchanged between devices over a short range (e.g., 10 centimeters). As such, it may be beneficial to allow data to be received via NFC to be implemented in an electronic game by a mobile phone. In this manner, a user's interest in the game may be enhanced since NFC data may be brought into the electronic game. Currently, there are many games that involve virtual worlds, but these games typically do not use NFC. The most common electronic games involve displaying a virtual world on a screen and allowing a user to interact with objects in the virtual world using a keyboard, mouse, or other game pointer. However, these games typically do not use NFC on a mobile device.
Additionally, while there are a number of existing techniques that use NFC on mobile phones and devices, these techniques typically do not implement NFC in an electronic game. For instance, currently a mobile phone may be utilized to read an NFC tag that contains an identifier of a media file and the phone may play the media file to the user. For example, a movie poster may have an NFC tag and when the user brings the phone in the proximity of the NFC tag, the NFC tag may provide the phone with a movie trailer that may be played and shown on the display of the phone. As another example, artwork in a museum may have an associated tag and when the user brings the phone in the proximity of the tag, a multimedia tour guide may be provided to the user's phone that explains facts about the artwork. Instead of a media file, the mobile phone may receive arbitrary information about an object that a NFC tag is attached to. For instance, a user of a phone may bring the phone in the proximity of a bus stop having an NFC tag with the location of the bus stop and read the NFC tag to obtain the time that next bus is scheduled to arrive. Even though the foregoing examples illustrate that there are mechanisms for using NFC on mobile phones these mechanisms do not typically utilize NFC in an electronic game of a mobile phone or mobile device.
It may be desirable to provide an alternative mechanism by which to implement electronic games and applications on communication devices. In this regard, it may be advantageous to create interesting electronic games involving virtual worlds by utilizing NFC and creating games that may be played even when there may be constraints on the data that NFC tags may contain. Additionally, it may be beneficial to create a game that allows users to easily play a variety of different games without requiring the users to buy new hardware.